ThePhysicsHub project

• Origins: Around 7-8 of us came together in the Summer of 2020 from a reddit post, as an attempt to share our enthusiasm in computational physics by creating simulations together. We were quite a broad group with students majoring in physics, computer science and chemical engineering. There was the choice of making research-oriented simulations within ourselves, or pedagogical simulations for the general public. We settled on the second option, and perhaps we did not gauge the amount of effort it would take to make user-friendly simulations.
• Progress: To be user-friendly, we decided that it would have to be accessible (with minimal setup, and no coding experience) and decided to host the simulations on a website, and write them using javascript. It was amazing how quickly we were able to learn the language and the p5.js framework, and by the end of Summer 2020, we had cranked out 3-4 simulations already. We then opened the repository to everyone, hoping that it would encourage others to add their own simulations as well.
• The downfall: As our university classes commenced, we fell short of time and motivation and the project ran into a stand-still. It turned out, we had to spend more time wrangling with the web and user-side of the simulations than the simulations themselves, which was counter-productive to our original aim. Over time, we lost interest entirely and the project was officially abandoned in Summer 2021. It was a bittersweet experience, but this served as my first entry into web development.
• The future: Most of our team-mates had moved on to other projects. But, in order to reclaim our original interests, along with another team-mate, Bartu, I decided to shelve ThePhysicsHub and create a broader organization, OpenPsiMu to undertake any further projects in a similar vein.